AARON NEVILLE

August 31, 2018(7:30PM)

Description

DOORS: 6:00PM SHOW: 7:30 AGES: 13+

Until now, it's been easy to separate Aaron Neville's career into two separate but equal strains: the funky stuff he's favored when working with his esteemed band of brothers, and the angelic balladry you associate with him when he's punching his own time card as a solo artist. Casual fans might admit they don't know much -- to borrow a phrase -- about Neville's musical center, but they've perceived a certain split in his career. An education is about to be provided, then, in the form of Apache, a solo album that makes the case for Aaron Neville as the most holistic of soul men. Its hard R&B side matches anything the Neville Brothers ever recorded for true grit, while still allowing plenty of space for a singer who's arguably the most distinctive vocal stylist on the planet to tell it like it is.

Apache also reflects Neville's social and spiritual concerns, marking only the second time in his 56-year recording career that he's co-written nearly an entire album's worth of material. The words are straight out of a poetry journal he began keeping in the 1970s, which more recently migrated to his iPhone. The music was written and produced by a pair of collaborators well known to enthusiasts of the retro-soul scene, Eric Krasno (guitarist for the groups Soulive and Rustic) and Dave Gutter (frontman for the Rustic Overtones). Together, they've come up with a modern/revivalist marvel harking back to a golden age that produced classics like Marvin Gaye's What's Goin' On (which Neville just happens to reference in the eco-conscious "Fragile World").

Aaron Neville's mind is constantly racing, musically, just as it was in the days when
the teachers would catch him deep in a distracted schoolboy reverie.
“Because I’ve got about 10 million songs in my head. Some of ‘em wake me
up at 3:00 in the morning, and I’ve got to sing the whole song to
myself before I can get back to sleep, to make sure I know all the
words,” he laughs. His middle-of-the-night song insomnia can make for
his next audience’s dream come true.